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John Hickson and Neddy Hunt, two hangers-on at the blacksmith’s shop, had seen this phantom more than once, but they never durst approach it. Indeed, every man and woman and child believed in this centaur-spectre, and I am not quite sure if our old master himself did not partly believe that such a thing had occasionally been seen on very dark nights.
Whilst I was tickling its bushy tail, it turned round upon me, and gave me a severe bite in the calf of the leg. This I kept a profound secret, but I was quite sure I should go mad every day, for many months afterwards. “There was a blacksmith’s shop leading down the village to Tudhoe Old Hall. Just opposite this shop was a pond, on the other side of the road.
Others will upheave the blacksmith’s hammer, or drive the plane over the carpenter’s bench, or take the lapstone and the awl, and learn the trade of shoe-making. Many will follow the sea, and become bold, rough sea-captains.
So, they came to the conclusion that it would be a pity to have all this trouble and expense for nothing; and that as they were so far on the road already, they had better go to Gretna Green, and marry each other; and they did so. And the very next preceding entry in the Blacksmith’s book, was an entry of the marriage of Emily Brown with Horace Hunter. Mr.
Hither they came, from the corn-fields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith’s forge, from the carpenter’s workshop, and from the shoemaker’s seat. They were an army of rough faces and sturdy frames. A trained officer of Europe would have laughed at them, till his sides had ached.
We crossed the street the huge bell at the old man’s door was rung thrice, but nothing could be heard in answer; we sent to the police and to a blacksmith’s the door was broken open, the whole tide of anxious visitors poured up the wide silent staircase all the doors were fastened; at length one was opened.
I sat down upon the shaft, and pondered the question deliberately in my mind; at length I concluded that he had come by them by one of those numerous casualties which occur upon the roads, of which I, being a young hand upon the roads, must have a very imperfect conception; honestly, of course—for I scouted the idea that Slingsby would have stolen this blacksmith’s gear—for I had the highest opinion of his honesty, which opinion I still retain at the present day, which is upwards of twenty years from the time of which I am speaking, during the whole of which period I have neither seen the poor fellow nor received any intelligence of him.
When any sudden death was to take place, or any sudden ill to befall the village, a large black horse used to emerge from it, and walk slowly up and down the village, carrying a rider without a head. The blacksmith’s grandfather, his father, himself, his three sons, and two daughters, had seen this midnight apparition rise out of the pond, and return to it before the break of day.
It was the evening of the sixteenth day before the calends of November, or, according to modern numeration, the eighteenth of October, the eve of the consular elections, when a considerable number of rough hardy-looking men were assembled beneath the wide low-browed arch of a blacksmith’s forge, situated near the intersection of the Cyprian Lane with the Sacred Way, and commanding a full view of the latter noble thoroughfare.
Occasionally a blacksmith’s shop, a paint room, or a livery stable, lower or meaner and more contracted than their neighbors, look as if they never got ripe, but had shrivelled and dropped off before their time.
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